The Embalmer and the American Way of Death

In this episode, we step inside the quiet, intricate world of American death care—seen through the practiced hands of veteran embalmer Shawn’te Harvell. While his craft restores an “illusion of life” for grieving families, the industry around him is rapidly changing: cremation is now the norm, green burials are rising, and the chemical rituals that defined 20th-century funerals are losing ground. Yet beneath these shifts lies something universal and unchanging—the human need to honor the dead and make sense of the moment between life and whatever comes next. How do we say goodbye in an age when tradition is fading, ecology matters, and the body itself is becoming a battleground of meaning? We explore the future of funerals, and what it reveals about us.https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/01/science/embalming-funerals-death.html